The reading companion
Rodney.
Rodney reads your club's notes before you meet, and hands back what you'll need: the passages people caught on, the question worth opening with, the thing one person noticed that nobody else did.
He taught Latin to teenagers and the eighteenth century to university seniors, so he explains without ever talking down. His own scholarship was a book of sources — everything a reader needed to meet The Beggar's Opera properly, gathered in one place. That's still his method here: prepare the ground, then leave the conversation to you.
You can't chat with Rodney — he isn't a chatbot. He prepares your guide, writes up the meeting, finds what your notes have in common, and gets out of the way.
What he prepares.
He signs in gilt, the one colour no member can hold — so you always know what was prepared and what was posted. When a guide grew only partly from your notes, it says so: Prepared by Rodney, partly from your club’s notes.
The discussion guide
Prepared by Rodney from your club’s notes.
Questions
Questions from Rodney.
The meeting recap
Written up by Rodney.
For whoever missed it
What you missed, from Rodney.
What your notes have in common
Rodney noticed.
What to read next
From Rodney.
- Talk with you — there is no chat.
- Write about a person; he writes about the book and the margin, never the reader.
- Post as a member, or into your club, or to your friends.
- Make a guide from nothing. If the club wrote no notes, there is no guide.